I’ve failed A LOT over the years and I’m really glad…

I’ve had two in-depth conversations with business owners in the last 24 hours and without the experience of having FAILED over and over again, I wouldn’t have been half as helpful to them.

So let’s take a quick look at all of the clangers we’ve dropped during the six years Obvious Advertising has been around:

Hotel-based Adv. Franchise: Could only sell to restaurants, too narrow a market, ran for 2 years, not profitable enough.Gator Tales: Coffee shop publication, too low of a price-point, ran for less than a year, not profitable enough.Valpak Franchise: Great concept, no long term advertisers, ran for almost 3 years, not profitable enough.Two different Billboard Trucks: High cost of operation, ran for almost 5 years, not profitable enough.

We started all of these endeavors with the best of intentions but all ultimately failed. I have thoughts about why each failed but at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. There was also the youth soccer and baseball franchise that didn’t make it and the 18 month-long foray into an inflatable business that bombed.

However, while all of these things where coming and going, we’ve been blessed to have some wins too. Obvious Advertising has become a very profitable Marketing Coordination business, we have a healthy portfolio of privately-owned billboards that we manage. We also have an amazing neighborhood publication that’s doing really well. We wouldn’t have any of that if we hadn’t been willing to try some things and FAIL…

Whatever it was that didn’t work out, put it behind you and K.G.D.S…

Whatever it is that you’re you’re doing now that’s struggling, get out of it and K.G.D.S…

K.G.D.S. is my motto, it means Keep Going Don’t Stop and like the two business owners I met with recently, I know I’m not the only one who needs to hear it.